


Oddities

by GoldenRaven



Series: Fratello [2]
Category: Pocket Monsters SPECIAL | Pokemon Adventures, Pocket Monsters: HeartGold & SoulSilver | Pokemon HeartGold & SoulSilver Versions
Genre: Gen, game!silver in mangaverse
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-01
Updated: 2019-08-01
Packaged: 2020-07-28 19:40:44
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 859
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20069485
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/GoldenRaven/pseuds/GoldenRaven
Summary: The other boy is strange, and that's all they agree on.Sequel to Out of Place (or not)





	Oddities

The other boy is strange.

He balks at any amount of money spent on him, flinches at doors opening and closing, and “Argent” (that’s the name he’d given Green, and the one Silver had elected to use for him) is sure he’s seen him stashing food.

He wouldn’t really consider himself to have had a normal life, but nothing Silver does makes sense even by his standards.

Oh, he knows money and food are not in endless supply for everyone (he’d realized that sometime around when he’d realized that other fathers didn’t come home smelling like blood, or pay more attention to experiments than their sons (hi Mewtwo)), but he doesn’t get why it doesn’t seem to have clicked for Silver yet that this is how things work now. The new wardrobe alone seems like an obvious hint.

For the first month or so after he’d picked Silver up, Argent keeps to himself, until it becomes clear that he’s not getting kicked out, but he still tries not to cling on Giovanni as much as he’d caught himself doing when it was just them. Partly to make room for Silver, and partly because Silver looks terrified every time he so much as starts a conversation with his father.

(His father meaning Silver’s father. Not Argent’s.)

“He’s not going to hurt you,” Argent points out once when they’re both out getting groceries (can’t someone be paid to do this?).

Silver glances over, turning away from a display of fruit to meet Argent’s gaze.

“What brought that up?”

“You did it again last night; looked like you were going to bolt after I asked a question.”

“Oh.” He turns back to the display, reaching for a bag.

“Just ‘oh’?”

“What else do you want me to say?”

Argent doesn’t have a reply to that, or at least not one that won’t end in either an argument or silent treatment, and he really doesn’t want an over-protective sneasel at his throat again, so he just watches as Silver bags the peaches.

In a way it’s nice; Argent had had moments of wanting siblings back in his world. Granted those fantasies usually centered around an older sibling, someone else to be Father’s good little heir, not a “twin”, but still, it’s nice to have someone his age around.

Even if he’s weird.

~

The other boy is strange.

Not because they look the same, or because he’s not from this world. Silver grew up with kidnapping birds and moving ice, the idea of another world is not as strange as it should be.

No, what he’s confused by is how relaxed he is. How normal all of this seems to him.

The first few weeks that Silver’s “home”, outside of one conversation about the differences in their fathers Argent keeps to himself, but at some point he’d apparently adjusted to Silver’s presence enough to let his guard down (even if Silver hadn’t), and the first time he sits next to Giovanni while he’s reading Silver catches himself tensing up, though whether to run or block a blow that was never thrown he’s not sure.

And that’s the other thing putting him on edge; that here’s a seemingly perfectly normal version of him, who’d apparently been perfectly happy to settle in, and yet Silver had still been missed, still been wanted back.

Surely it would have been easier to just… forget him.

That’s not a complaint, he’s just not used to the idea that he isn’t replaceable. (Even Green had found other people to help her deal with The Mask (Yes, he knows that’s not what she’d been trying to do).)

But it is, in a way, nice to have a bit of a guide for what is and isn’t allowed, and one evening, with Argent in bed early on account of what he refused to admit was a cold setting in, Silver wanders into the living room, to find Giovanni sitting on the couch, book in hand, and after a full minute of debate, he walks across the room to sit down beside him.

His father doesn’t look up, just slips an arm around his shoulders out of habit, before he tenses, seemingly remembering that the more confident of the boys had already gone to bed, and turns his head to look at Silver, where he’s sitting stiffly, his gaze on his hands in his lap.

The arm around his shoulders lifts briefly, before resettling, albeit looser, and Silver glances over.

“Is everything okay?” The concern in his father’s voice stings.

He nods, then leans in, still ridged, still nervous, still expecting to be informed that no, he doesn’t get this.

Instead, he’s pulled in closer and feels his father’s forehead rest on the top of his head.

Silver wraps his arms around himself, and stays still, trying to commit as much of this to memory as he can: the warmth from being held, the way Giovanni smells like smoke, and the forest, and whatever herbs had been in dinner, the very faint, and very foreign feeling of safety that settles as he lets himself relax just a bit.

He’ll figure this out. Eventually.


End file.
